Religious School Parent Bulletin January 18, 2013
Each grade in Religious School will be collecting tzedakah through the end of the year to go towards purchasing part of the newly-commissioned Anshei Israel Torah. We hope that you will join in this important mitzvah (commandment).
We have many volunteer opportunities with the Religious School. Upcoming opportunities include cooking for our K – 2nd Grade Dinner on Tuesday, Jan. 22, 4:00-5:00pm; setting up for the dinner on Friday, Jan. 25, 10:00-11:00am; and helping students put on tefillin at the "World Wide Wrap" on Sunday, Feb. 3, 9:30-11:00am. If you are interested in any of these opportunities to help, please contact Rabbi Ben Herman.
Reminder: We do not have Religious School this Sunday in observance of Martin Luther King, Jr. weekend. Religious school resumes on Tuesday, Jan. 22.
UPCOMING EVENTS:
Friday, January 25
K – 2nd Grade Shabbat Service and Dinner 5:45pm
I look forward to the students in K-2 helping lead Friday evening services, including some joyous Shabbat songs, followed by a festive dinner. Please RSVP for the dinner to Kim.
Saturday, January 26
Shabbat Shira Service 10:00am
The 3rd – 6th Grade students have been learning new Shabbat melodies in preparation for an upcoming special Shabbat. This Shabbat of Song will have new melodies to familiar prayers and will explore some of the varied music of our heritage.
Sunday, February 3
Men's Club "World Wide Wrap" 9:30-11:00am
As part of a national Men's Club initiative, the 5th and 6th Grade religious school students will be learning how to put on tefillin. Parents are encouraged to come and bring their tefillin (if they have) to help demonstrate to their children this important mitzvah (commandment). Please RSVP to Mark Levine to let him know that you will be attending.
Saturday, Feb. 9
Shabbat Family Experience 5:00 pm in the Epstein Chapel
Share in this interactive, spirit-filled and participatory service led by children in the Religious School and Tucson Hebrew Academy. Participants will lead the afternoon and evening Shabbat services with a delicious meal in between. Please RSVP for the dinner to Kim.
TEACHERS' CLASSROOM RECAPS:
Kindergarten/1st Grade-Renee HulseyZ
What a fun day we had! We practiced more Hebrew letters: the kindergartners worked on writing some letters, and the 1st Graders learned the letter "nun." We practiced the prayers we are going to lead at our Shabbat service on Jan. 25. In art, we had a blast making "palm trees" with paint and our palms and arms. Don't forget to bring tzedakkah!
2nd Grade – Natalie Guerin
Second graders added the letter "final mem" to their reading and counted how many times they found it in one of our prayers. We also read "Moses on the Mountain" and talked about the Ten Commandments. On Tuesday, we had our pizza party that the students earned for good behavior and we decorated one of the bulletin boards with "A Mensch Is."
3rd Grade – Laura Olesen
Third graders continued working on blessings and script. They are doing a wonderful job. They took home a Hebrew practice page. Please encourage them to practice and also to practice their solo for Consecration. They should be listening online to practice their solos and other prayers for Friday night service. This week they also have been studying about Jerusalem and the Kotel.
4th Grade – Sarah Artzi
We continued our Hebrew "ulpan" this week, focusing on script writing and reviewing the five final letters: Haf, Mem, Nun, Fey and Tzadee Tzofit. In Judaics, we began our new history unit by breaking up into pairs and looking for vocabulary words and terms in the first chapter of our new book. Next week, each pair or team is going to teach the rest of the class about the section that they studied. Enjoy the long weekend and please remind your students that a great way to celebrate MLK Day is to do a mitzvah for someone else!
4th Grade – Rodin Molina
This week in Hebrew we made sheets to play bingo with using new and review vocabulary words. This allowed us to do some letter and vowel review, as well as work on handwriting, with the goal of making our Hebrew script more legible. We also discussed the Sh'ma prayer and students took a quiz on it. In Judaics, we set the stage on Sunday for the material we'll be covering this semester and talked about the context of the history we'll be learning (Abraham and Sarah through the first temple). On Tuesday students took a quiz on the material from Sunday and we discussed the importance of the temple in ancient Jewish life. Students were asked to imagine the impact the destruction of the temple had on Jewish communities and respond personally.
5th Grade – Courtney DeYoung
The 5th Graders continued to learn about Israel's wars. They are also getting excited for their life-cycle unit, for which they will make paper dolls that represent different aspects of themselves and which will go through the various Jewish life-cycle rituals.
6th Grade – MeMe Aguila
The 6th Graders have been researching aspects of Jewish History on the computers, which they will report to their peers. We are also getting ready for our Prophets unit, which will focus on the Prophets featured in the students' Bar/Bat Mitzvah Haftorot.
7th – 8th Grade – Jacob Kotz
The 7th and 8th Graders studied UN Resolution 242 (which was about the territories Israel had conquered during the Six Day War) and went over what politicians at the time said regarding the resolution. They compared it to what politicians are saying today.
Rabbi Ben Herman